Girl Inform Me
by spinlight
Summary: To be honest, Robbie gets where Tori is coming from. The gang - they were his first and only real taste at friendship, and he's kind of scared shitless at the prospect of having to give them up.
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter One**

It's spring - another seemingly normal dry humidity, the kind that causes Robbie's chest to tighten by afternoon, day. They're lounging around the clubhouse **(**_they_ of course meaning the entire gang give or take a Trina lurking around and _clubhouse_ of course meaning Tori's living room**)** and no one really thinks much of it when Tori suddenly announces: "I'm going to miss you guys." She's been saying stuff like that since the start of January and with each passing month, it's getting more frequent and more sappy. The brunette beauty is under the impression that with their senior year coming to a close and college looming on the horizon, the group is going to scatter to every point of the world and never see one and other again. Which is kind of loopy since Cat is the only one leaving the state **(**she's moving to New York with her brother because _'yay subways system'_ which seems to Robbie is just the same as saying '_yay potential mugging'_**)**.

Regardless, this causes Jade to let out a thick groan from where she sits sandwiched between Andre and Cat. She then rolls her face to one side, grumbling something into Cat's dress sleeve, causing the redhead to look more than horrified as her hands shoot up to cover her mouth.

This, of course, has Tori looking a little offended. When Cat leans over and whispers into Robbie's ear, and his eyes go just as wide - Tori becomes entirely offended.

Robbie nods to confirm her reaction is accurate but he refuses to tell her just what Jade has said because he grew up in a moral, Jewish household.

"I'm _serious_, you guys, every day is moving us forward and high school is about to be over!"

"Oh, is that how time works? Someone get to a phone and alert the presses, Tori finally cracked the case. Turns out it goes forward and not freakin` sideways like they've been teaching us. Tell us, Vega, the earth - flat or round. " Jade intones.

"_The presses_, is that a 1-800 number or 1-888?" Andre asks.

Tori huffs.

Beck makes a sound in the back of his throat.

Cat lets out a breathy giggle, looking like she's on another planet.

"Maybe it's a 555 number." Robbie chimes in.

Andre shakes his head, not convinced. "They only use those on TV shows."

Robbie and Andre keep this banter up for a while longer with Robbie stating that '_everything on TV is real'_ and Andre questioning how he knows this to which Robbie replies '_he read so on the internet_.' Everyone seems amused by this except for Tori, who drops down dejected on the carpet, upset that no one is upset about their world slowly falling apart and Jade, whom is widely known to get heartburn from any sort of positive emotion.

To be honest, Robbie gets where Tori is coming from. The gang - they were his first **(**and only**)** real taste of friendship, and he's kind of scared shitless at the prospect of having to let them go. But he's not about to go around publically lamenting like the girl on the floor for a number of reasons but mostly because anytime he shows too much emotion, people seem to get creeped out by it. And well, okay, not so much anymore since he's learned the right way and wrong way to court a girl but that stuff sticks with you. So instead of being mocked like Tori, he's going to make jokes with the others and maybe somehow Jedi mind trick her into realizing he feels the exact same way.

"Don't be sad, Tori, we'll have the whole summer to hang out!" Cat randomly decides to offer. It's a helpful undertone somewhere in the pitch of her voice.

And, of course, it's precisely the kind of lifeline Tori needs to pull herself back up.

"The summer!"

Everyone just sort of stares.

"Living together!"

Andre tosses a glance to the others, confusion furrowing his brows and shaping lines across his forehead. "Did she cut out for anyone else? Was there a middle part that somehow connects those two things?"

"No, we pretty much got what you got." Beck answers from his spot in the chair.

"We'll get a summer house!" Tori is practically foaming at the mouth with excitement, and it's actually kind of adorable if you ignore how terrifying it is. "We'll split the rent six ways and get a summer house! Guys - _guys! _It'll be so amazing!"

"Hey, yeah!" Cat cheers her on.

"You won't even be here, you leave the last week of school." Jade reminds, having no issues with raining on the redhead's parade.

"Oh…" Cat starts, ready to slip into one of her brief downward spirals." …yeah."

Check, parade rained on.

"We can have skype slumber parties." Tori consoles.

"No one agreed to any of this. No one is even sure what they'll be doing for summer except for Cat." Beck interjects, quick to beat Jade to it who would have used a tone way less gentle.

This is where Tori starts to jut out her bottom lip and her eyes go wide like a Disney princess. It's sort of like Cat's pout only it's way more effective because it's not used every 3.5 seconds. Robbie shifts in his seat, russet eyes scanning the faces of his friends before landing back on Tori. His decision comes sudden but it ends up taking a couple of seconds for him to find the words and let them topple past his teeth in the correct order.

"It would be great to get out of my parent's house sooner. I can't move into the dorms until August."

Tori looks over at him hopeful.

"Yeah." Andre agrees. "I'm going to be interning at this recording studio all summer and I know it's gonna have some late hours. It'd be nice not to have to deal with my grams every time I come home at two in the morning."

Now Tori looks overly grateful and she's staring at Robbie with a smile and it makes the shells of his ears hot so he just offers a timid ghost of a smile back before looking down to the carpet.

It takes some doing but Beck is on board. And they get a uninterested '_whatever_' from Jade which they're all taking as a pretty good sign **(**though Robbie is a tad fearful of the prospect of living with the black haired girl which is why he's already making plans to go out deadbolt shopping**)**.

Later on, when everyone is on the way out of the door, that's when Tori grabs hold of Robbie's wrist and pulls him back in the house. He thanks whatever cosmic force that actually runs the universe that he managed to contain the girly shriek that wanted so badly to escape his lips.

"Robbie."

"Uh, hey. Yo." He holds the spot she grabbed him at with his free hand because if the cold air hits it, that's all he's going to be able to focus on. "What's up, lady?"

She smiles but that's okay, because she does that all the time.

"I wanted to thank you for what you did today."

"I didn't do anything." He shakes his head.

"Yes you did!" She pursues. "You got everyone to come around and it means a whole lot to me, Robbie - like, it honestly does. I'd be so lost without you guys and I'm not ready to give everyone up. Not yet."

She's so weirdly intense about it that Robbie can't help but feel touched that he's included in this group of people that she can't give up **(**though he wonders if he's just a part of it because it's like a package deal. Which isn't anything new, it's actually how he approaches a lot of things in life**)**.

He hasn't said anything for a bit and she's sort of looking at him like he's left her hanging out in the breeze.

"Me too, Tor. I mean, I'd be lost without you guys too. This summer… it's gonna be a lot of fun."

Robbie knows he's redeemed when she pulls him in for a hug. He goes stiff as a board but she doesn't seem to mind.

The noise he makes when she gives him a little squeeze causes her to laugh.

It echoes through his head the entire drive home.

**A/N: So this exists because 'circuswheel' promised me a Robbie/Beck bromance oneshot and I wanted to collect.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

On any given day, Robbie thinks he might be in love with any one of the girls he considers a close friend **(** and also Jade **)**.

It's not hard to see why he'd be in love with Cat. She's basically made out of rainbows, and sunshine, and that marshmallow fluff stuff they sell in glass jars that he'll spend his whole life longing for but will never get to have… that in itself is kind of a metaphor that hits too close to home. And yeah, maybe her unbridled optimism **(** or ignorance **) **can wear on your nerves but most of the time, it's actually refreshing. There's not a lot of people in the world that can just tune out all of the bad stuff and focus only on the good.

Robbie often wishes he could be like that.

Being in love with Jade is a scary experience. It never stays too long - it's sort of like this intense moment where a bunch of static gets filtered through his body and disrupts his brain waves, and his heart beats, and everything goes all wonky. In that moment, he looks at the dark haired girl and likes to think he really sees her. Sees who she is, or who she'd like to be instead of just what she projects. It's nice but then it's, like, over. Usually after that she catches him staring and is quick to throw something **(** always pointy **)** at his head. If you're wondering, yeah, there's been plenty of blood.

One time he thought he could be in love with Trina but then he promptly cried himself to sleep.

Now her sister is a whole different story.

Tori is beautiful. Like, come on, _duh_. But she's so much more than that because she's nice, and sweet, and she cares about everyone. Some people try and act like they do but Tori, she honestly does. The kind of good person that makes you sort of feel shitty whenever you're in the same room as them because you know that you don't care like they _care_. She's not perfect though - pretty far from it. She can be crazy as baboon at the drop of a time. Neurotic too, about the tiniest things. But that's why he loves her. Tori feels the most real and he knows that doesn't make any sense but it does to him. She's so close yet out of reach in the same breath. She's just… well, Tori.

"Step away from the ledge, my friend." Speaking of, her voice floats on the breeze, carries the melody to his ears. "You could cut ties with all the lies that you've been living in."

Robbie is quick to turn around, sees Tori peaking her head out through the window and looking over at him. At this point, he should mention that he's been sitting on the roof of the house they had just moved into not even two hours ago. His room is the highest point and the window leads to one of the lower sections of the roofing. Thirteen year old Robbie would be shitting his corduroy pants right now because he use to be super afraid of heights. Then he was forced to ride the Hulk rollercoaster in Universal Studios seven times and after being frozen in fear for thirty six hours, he sort of just got over it.

"I like that, did you write it?"

"I wish." She shrugs. "It's by some band from the `90s - one of Trina's old boyfriends would listen to them all the time."

Robbie's brows furrow something fierce. "He _willing_ dated your sister?"

"I'm pretty sure he wasn't above the influence, if ya` know what I mean."

He nods as if that's all she needs to say, because it totally is. Russet eyes drift out into the neighborhood for a few seconds before his attention shifts right back to Tori, who is not so gracefully making her out the window. " Uh, be careful, Vega. It's a pretty steep drop. They'll probably take any damage you do to the driveway out of the safety deposit. "

"Vega?" She pauses, eyebrow arched and one leg out the window.

"It's something I'm trying out, okay?" He answers back sheepishly.

She rolls her eyes but also smiles and that sort takes the sting out. He watches her critically, ready to pop up at any moment and… he has no idea. Fall with her and hope that she lands on top of him for a softer impact? Yeah, that sounds like a great plan - how is he getting into college again? There must have been an error in some database somewhere because that does not sound like the planning of an adult. Or someone with at least a half functioning brain.

Robbie is thinking about getting himself tested for, well, everything when Tori plops down beside him and adjusts herself accordingly. She's a lot closer than he's actually comfortable with. For all extensive purposes, his right side and her left are basically pressed together and it's wonderful, but it's also terrible so he doesn't know how to respond. Ultimately he decides that not freaking out is the best course of action so he takes one or two internal breaths and sort of just _chills out_ for a second. It seems to work and all his muscles uncoil and the tension seeps away.

Until she's talking right in his ear and he can _feel_ how close her lips are.

"Earth to Robbie, come in cosmonaut Robbie."

"This is cosmonaut Robbie." He plays along. "Go ahead, Houston."

She grins, placing a hand to one of her ears like she's holding a headset there. "NASA, the world, and Tori Vega were just wondering how it feels to finally be out of you parents house?"

"Copy that - it's amazing, Houston. Words can't describe it, really, to explore this new frontier. To boldly go where every college student as gone before."

He looks over with a light grin when she snorts.

"Did it get too nerdy by the end?" Robbie asks.

"A little." She confirms, leaning further into him. "But you always pull it off."

That gives him the warm fuzzies all over and he's content to let the moment drop into comfortable silence. So neither of them says anything, they just sit and stare off into the area that would be their temporary home for the next two months and some change. It would be the four of them this summer - Andre, Beck, Tori and himself. Jade had opted out of actually agreeing to moving in or the paying of rent but, horrifyingly, she seemed to be very taken with Robbie's room so far. He's been trying to keep that thought to the back of his head.

It's a failing effort.

"How about you?" He breaks the stillness around them.

"How about me what?"

"You know…" He prompts. "How do you feel about not being in your parents house anymore?"

"Oh."

And then she does this thing he notices she does whenever she's really thinking about something. Like fully in the moment, take it apart and put it back together sort of thinking. Her eyelids flutter and she looks down. The biting of her bottom lip seems to be optional but happens more than not.

"It's exciting." She finally says.

Robbie tilts his head. "That's it? You gave me all that build up for _it's exciting_?"

"What do you want me to say!" She laughs out. "It _is_ exciting. It's tons of stuff, really. Exciting, and scary, and liberating, and bonkle, and…"

"Bonkle" He interrupts in a tone that suggests this isn't the first time he's had to question Tori on the validity of her words and whether or not their actual words.

"Yes."

"Definition."

She has the audacity to look offended. "If you don't know what it means, I'm not just going to tell you, Robbie. I mean, not knowing what bonkle means - how did you manage to get a 1282 on your SAT?"

He's about to defend himself when Andre pops his head out the window. "Is she trying to use _bonkle_ on you, dude?"

"Yes!" Robbie exclaims.

Tori leans over even more, shielding her face in the crook of Robbie's neck now that she sees he has back up.

"She tried that on me last week, had to look it up on the net." Andre grunts, moving out of the window and onto the roof too. "Apparently it's some town in Scotland. Murdostoun Castle is located close by - never heard of the place but it seems fancy, yo."

He settles in on the other side of Tori, leaning into her side like she had done to Robbie and Robbie would feel jealous if the remote, impossible possibility that Tori could ever like him actually existed. But seeing how it doesn't, it's just twinge in his chest before he's smiling and looking over at his two friends.

"So, bonkle huh?"

"Shut up." She responds but the words are muffled into his neck and he tries his best not to shudder from her warm breath. In the next instant, she pulls he face away and he mourns the loss. Tori looks over to Andre. "No one asked you to come out here and… and mess with my messing of Robbie! I had him fooled!"

"She had you fooled?" Andre asks.

"She had no one fooled." Robbie shook his head.

And que the Tori pout.

"You guys suck." She nods in agreement with herself, bottom lip jutted out. "I'm kicking the both of you out."

Andre laughs. "Guess that means you'll have to get Jade to move in which kind of works out considering she's been stalking Robbie's room like a jungle cat trying to mark it's territory."

"How do you know what a jungle cat trying to mark it's territory looks like?" Robbie questions, though when he thinks about the way Jade spread out on his bed even though he had politely asked her to **a) **not to do that and **b) **at least take off her boots - Andre was pretty spot on.

"Hey, my grams got the Discovery channel, okay?"

He seems oddly offended so Tori and Robbie let it drop.

"I was thinking… this week is Cat's last week in town so maybe - like Saturday, we could throw her a going away party?" Tori finishes sort of weak, like she's unsure if it's okay to bring up so soon after their mini jungle cat discussion and whether or not it's a good idea.

"I think that's an awesome idea."

And he does. He's been trying to think of the perfect gift to give the tiny redhead. Something that says '_hey, I'm not a stalker or anything but take this and please remember me forever should we never cross paths again'_. Which could very well happen in a number of scenarios that Robbie is just crazy enough to spend the ten minutes right before he falls asleep each night thinking about. Clearly the fist one is Cat getting kidnapped because she's adorable and easy to fit in your pocket. That's why the original gift he had planned to get her was pepper spray but then all he could think about was her accidentally using it on some poor unsuspecting person… or, you know, herself. The second scenario is she gets really, _really_ famous doing something or another and she comes back to California, and sort of makes everyone famous by proxy only not him because for some reason she doesn't recognize him **(** he has contacts in this daydream **)** and he ends up living in the sewers or being an accountant. The third sce-

"Ay, yo! Robbie!"

"Huh?" He spazs out a bit, blinking hard. "What?"

Andre smirks. "You looked like you were on another planet man."

"He's been doing that a lot today." Tori comments, reaching into her jacket pocket and pulling out a tic-tac container. She pops one or two into her hand and holds them out to Robbie. "I think he forgot to take his meds."

"I can plainly see that these are placebos."

"Nope." She shakes her head. "Meds. Peppermint meds that will keep you from soaring off into space. Take them."

"I don't want them." Robbie rises his chin, not going to be bullied.

"Take them, Shaprio, you need to get better!"

"Are you implying I have bad breath!" He exclaims.

Andre just watches amused as Tori keeps shoving her hand with the tic-tacs at Robbie's mouth while using her other to grip his neck.

"I don't like how I feel on the meds, I don't feel like me. Why can't you let me be me!" He's fighting her as best he can but the sad truth is that she probably has more upper body strength than he does.

He gets one hand wrapped around her wrist and the other one is taking strategic jabs at her side when Beck is the third person to pop his head through the window. "Two hours in and we have our first fight."

"Make her stop, Beck!" Robbie pleads.

But Beck doesn't make her stop because he's a terrible friend and Robbie is going to let him know later. No, only thing that Beck does is smirk, and watch, and comment. "You know, the two of you out here on the roof fighting - someone is going to call the cops."

"Good - I hope they take him away with no bail."

That was Jade.

From inside his room.

Doing God knows what to his stuff.

"Hey! I -"

And that's when Tori manages to toss the tic-tacs into his mouth.

Everyone looks worried as he chokes for a moment but when he finally spits them out, they cheer and he's now violently terrified from what the summer would bring.

**A/N: I ended up moving so I was lost in space but I'm back now. So... hey.**


End file.
